Hyper Electoralism and Pakoda Nationalism

Soon after his election, Prime Minister Narendra Modi commented ‘sarkar nahi chalana hai, desh chalana hai’. Under the current regime, the state and nation have become conflated into a single entity. Any difference or acknowledgment of their separation is seen as the weakening of the colossal ‘nation building’ project that the BJP has undertaken.

Democracy is seen only to further this project, and all those elements of democracy that do not overtly support such a vision of the polity are seen as limitations of democracy that need a course correction. Democracy under this vision is essentially understood as winning elections; beyond that, any accountability is understood as a blot on the will of the majority. After the 2002 assembly elections in Gujarat, majority and majoritarianism have gradually collapsed to mean one and the same thing. In fact, rule of law, the autonomy of institutions and individual rights, and minority rights, among other things have come to be seen as diluting the will of the majority. Therefore, the legitimacy of the current regime under Mr Modi flows exclusively by winning elections, and there is very little independent focus either on governance or policy because they are mere extensions of the will that is already registered in the election results.

Muscular Governance and Media Images

The rule of law, whether in Chhattisgarh or Kashmir, is seen as diluting the strength of muscular governance, while minority rights have been re-framed as appeasement and institutional autonomy, be it that of the judiciary, universities, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) or other constitutional or statutory bodies, is seen as unjustified or freedom without accountability. The singular milestone seems to be winning elections, notwithstanding accusations of trying to form governments even without a majority in the Assembly. Winning elections and forming governments are the best displays of the success of muscular governance. Perhaps, for the first time in post-independence history, a regional leader has assumed such prominence in national politics, that too in such a short span of time. Modi’s pan-India appeal, carefully crafted through the media images, can only be sustained through a renewed claim through successive electoral victories because there is very little public debate on public policy and governance in the last four years.

Neither in terms of foreign policy, Kashmir, and employment nor with regard to inflation, growth, or educational facilities has this government formulated anything new worth noting. There is either no policy framework, or they are more or less continuation of the policies formulated under the Congress, including the much-debated Goods and Services Tax (GST) and Aadhaar that were in the pipeline under the previous United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government. In fact, Shashi Tharoor of the Congress insisted that the Modi government is a ‘name-changer’ and not ‘game-changer’.⁸³

Modi, along with the BJP, seems to perceive the ability to win elections through fresh strategies as a real-time strength. The BJP undoubtedly is in an expansionist mode, including charting out fresh territories in the Northeast and the South. The BJP is a relatively young party that can afford to be flexible with its electoral strategies and leadership choices.

Secularism without the Welfare State

All other parties have become saturated in terms of their social base, which has left out many social groups unrepresented. The BJP is taking the lead in representing such social groups, including the Dalits and the OBCs, and providing them with leadership opportunities. Many regional parties have emerged in various states as breakaway factions or from anti-Congress movements. All this provides the BJP an opportunity to forge alliances with various partners.

This is also being made possible because the RSS adds a dimension to the rise of the BJP that is missing in all other political formations. While most parties formulate policies with the immediate imperatives in mind, the BJP with the RSS is perhaps the only political force in India today with a distinct political vision and ideological clarity. They firmly believe in creating a majoritarian ‘Hindu Rashtra’, and therefore make political moves that have long-term goals in mind.

Perhaps, the terminal decline of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) is a notable example in this case. The BJP carefully worked its way by initially forging an alliance with the BSP, then compelling the BSP to move from ‘bahujan’ to ‘sarvajan’, and then finally recrafting its Dalit symbolism into Hindu symbolism found in the slogan ‘Ye Hathi nahi, Ganesh hai, Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh hai’.⁸⁴ The BJP’s singular focus on elections emanates from the new-found space with the collapse of the welfare state after the 1990s. India cannot afford to remain a secular state without a social-democratic welfare state in place. The Congress is groping in the dark with secularism, while it has actively dismantled the Nehruvian welfare state, it wishes to continue with a secular agenda. Secularism in India was a way of pursuing a welfare agenda. By dismantling the welfare state, the Congress undermined the ideological and social justification and roots of secularism in India.

In an era of hyper-electoralism of the BJP at the core is their strategy of alternating between development and Hindutva. The momentum is sought to be maintained by alternating the emphasis on either of the two agendas.

Hindutva versus Development?

Conventional analysis has pitted Hindutva as an alternative agenda to development. The BJP-RSS combine has a dual strategy of development and Hindutva where the failure of one is made good by the other.

In other words, if development does not deliver, then the BJP-RSS combine pushes for Hindutva politics, mobilizing communal polarization while claiming integration through development. Thus, BJP’s strategy has been one of claiming ‘sab ka saath, sab ka vikas’ through development, undermining the old kind of sectional mobilization based on caste and religious identities, and replacing it with integration through the large-scale developmental process. How this strategy works on the ground and what is claimed are quite different. Thus, the current impasse in BJPs electoral prospects is the result of what BJP claimed through its slogans and programme and how it has worked out on the ground.

It is now time to rethink how this strategy works on the ground. What it does is quite opposite to the conventional wisdom. In other words, there cannot be Hindutva politics without high growth rates and an expanding economy. Hindutva, ironically, works as a political strategy only when developmental aspirations are high and are in no mood to tolerate any obstruction to its onward march. BJP’s rise to power in 2014 was precisely due to the aspirations set in by the development made possible by the Congress in its rule for 10 years.

Modi was seen as an alternative who could take Indian development to a new level by taking more bold policy decisions that are necessitated by market forces, what former prime minister Manmohan Sigh had referred to, borrowing from Adam Smith, as the ‘animal spirits’⁸⁵ that need to be unleashed in order to actualize faster development. It is in this context that Congress and its modes of functioning became synonymous with ‘policy paralysis’, and unable to push the process that they began with the vigour necessary to take it to the next level. Modi’s image as a leader with the ability to take bold decisions went in his favour.⁸⁶

This was actualized partly because of his campaign of the trumped-up claims of the ‘Gujarat Model’ that combined high growth with high-decibel majoritarianism.⁸⁷ It was a rare combination marked by the Gujarat riots. It was this combination that made up the brand Modi. In popular perception, Modi delivered a combination of high growth with Hindutva, one supporting the other. One was acceptable only in combination with the other.

The current crisis of the BJP and the challenge they will face in 2019 is precisely a breakdown of this combinatory postulation that they had projected. In the earlier moment too, the ‘India Shining’ campaign failed because the claims to development did not match the ground realities.

Pakoda Nationalism

Modi began by claiming the ability to create two crore jobs per annum and thus began with the slogans of ‘Make in India’ and ‘Stand up India’ as an overarching policy frame.⁸⁸ However, with the dip in the growth rates, jobless growth, and sustained agrarian crisis, the developmental claims can no longer sustain, and as a result, Hindutva too does not work. National integration through developmental means is considered a better alternative to sectional inclusion based on caste and religious identities. In other words, social groups, for instance, Dalits in Uttar Pradesh, are willing to look beyond their immediate identities if there is a promise to be included through massive developmental agenda.

This also works because it helps in economic integration and mobility and also allows groups such as the Dalits to overcome the misrecognition and stigma attached with sectional mobilization. Dalits then can also claim to be citizens rather than ‘merely’ Dalits. However, if the developmental agenda does not allow for such integration, then these groups have no option or qualms about going back to heightened sectional identities.

BJP made similar claims with regard to Muslims in Gujarat that they were better placed in comparison with the Muslims elsewhere, in spite of the criticism that the Modi regime was patently anti-minority.⁸⁹ In such a context, any talk of separate Muslim interests looks anti-national because it betrays the universal benefits that development sets in. Thus, claims against Congress for appeasing Muslims looked more credible and also as hampering development and weakening the nation. Therefore, the success of the Hindutva strategy depended on the ability of development to provide more universal-national opportunities for everyone irrespective of their specific cultural identities. Thus, communal polarization was also a response to the way it obstructs development, and therefore, a resurgent nation. It is only as part of this strategy that BJP can sustain an anti-Muslim or for that matter anti-Dalit rhetoric.

Without development, the Hindutva nationalism looks like an empty claim. Worse, it looks like a deliberate ploy to divert attention. Suddenly, BJP’s strategy today can be projected as a diversionary strategy rather than as a legitimate nationalist assertion. Modi began by claiming that he is retaining the Congress-initiated Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Grant (MNREG) scheme as representative of the colossal failure of the Congress and making political fortunes by pushing people into perpetual poverty. MNREG, he claimed, symbolizes the failure of the agenda of Garbi Hatao initiated by Mrs Gandhi in the 1970s. Instead, what is needed is an imagination of a ‘New India’ where the youth are not dependent on doles but are asking for skill development and expanding opportunities. With the glaring failure to create either new skills or large-scale employment Modi and his finance minister turned to recognize even making pakodas as a gainful employment. Mr Amit Shah even attempted to turn the argument against by claiming that a living by making pakodas is more dignified than by begging for the doles by the government. Can hyper-masculine claims of nationalism coexist with a programme for the youth to make a living by making pakodas?⁹⁰

The problem with the current political regime under Narendra Modi is that it failed to make sense of this connection. It became a victim of its own claims. It too understood development and Hindutva as a two-pronged strategy where one needs to be used in lieu of the other; failing to understand one is dependent on the other. The reason even the demand for building the Ram Mandir does not seem to hold a similar appeal is that the Ram Mandir is symbolic of a resurgent India—New India, which means both a robust economic power and a culturally unified Hindu nation. A Hindu nationalism with a faltering economy, in fact, reminds Hindus of the cultural inferiority they are often reminded of by the RSS. Claims of an ‘authentic’ and a glorious past can work only in tandem with high-end corporate growth, fast-paced urbanization, expanding infrastructure, global capital flows, and increasing employment opportunities.

Challenges of Technocratic Liberalism

Since the current regime missed the link, they are faced with a political dead-end. The failure of the Modi regime is to understand that the economy needs a different set of policy frame from that of cultural assertion. Modi seems to have applied his experience in raising high-pitched cultural mobilization to that of the economy. Demonetization is a clear standout example of this bravado.

BJP has also had much less experience in governance than street politics. Governance cannot be managed purely through electoral considerations. It needs a different set of parameters. Sometimes, it requires policy decisions that need to be considered independently. While populism successfully represents such a policy planning as elitist since it is dependent on the role of experts and fosters technocratic liberalism that caters the interests of tiny elite, while this undoubtedly has some purchase, it is also self-defeating as the populist-driven governance also has its own set of adverse impact on the promises populist leaders make.

An example is the kind of debate under the UPA between the Congress and the Communist Party of India (Marxist), [CPI(M)] with regard to nuclear energy that almost brought down the government with the latter’s withdrawal of support. Such policy conflicts as the very nature of politics did not take institutional functioning seriously. Institutions in a democracy have a more refracted way of expressing public issues, though not in a direct manner as in street mobilization. It is the sheer complexity of liberal democracy that institutions look to be in conflict with the democratic aspirations, while issues such as separation of powers, federalism, independence of media and judiciary, and the autonomy of universities are precisely modes of dealing with competing claims in a democracy that have no easy resolution. Easy resolution is sought to be replaced with moderate accommodation of interests, and here, the institutional arrangement seeks to play an important role. So the conflict between environmental concerns and livelihood needs plays out as a conflict between legislature and judiciary; or the conflict between global corporate capital and agrarian interests plays out as a conflict between Centre and the states. Dissent is a way of making sense of the inherent diversity of interests and competing claims. The current regime consistently worked against all of this in order to project a more robust and a decisive leadership—strongman—to contrast itself from the previous Congress regime. The wheel has turned a full circle. The same methods lead to a faltering economy, which in turn has made the cultural agenda and street mobilization look more vacuous. In course of time, it would be also become difficult to sustain the popularity and credibility of the leadership, which has been arduously built through media images.